Canada: Dog days and nights

THERE is something of the frozen midnight in the eyes of a husky. Half-dog, half-wolf, it stalks the borderlands of the imagination somewhere between cuddly toy and Rottweiler of the ice floes. That dual nature was captured perfectly by Jack London in his 1903 bestseller The Call of the Wild, which tells how Buck, a kidnapped ranch pet, is forced to fight for his life in a team of sled huskies during the Klondike gold rush.

I first read that story 30 years ago. Now I was living it. With the thermometer dipping below -20C (-4F), I was surrounded by a slavering pack of more than 70 huskies, straining on their leashes and howling at the moon. It was suppertime at Frank Turner's MukTuk kennels near Whitehorse, capital of the Yukon.

Frank is a "musher" or dog-sled driver, one of an elite band of men and women whose vocation in life is to keep alive the pioneer spirit of the frozen Northlands - and to instill a little of it in the odd tourist. And the first lesson I had to learn was to care for the huskies.

As I nervously clutched a bowl of steaming dog food, all thoughts of the cuddly toy variety deserted me. Which of the pack looked least threatening? I plumped for a dog with large floppy ears and the word "Thinker" daubed on his kennel. Happily, Thinker could not have given me a more enthusiastic reception and I was soon covered in a warm mush of doggy saliva and ground-up bison heart. My love affair with the husky had begun.

I had timed my visit to coincide with the Yukon Quest, an epic 1,000-mile race - the distance between London and Rome as the crow flies - run each February between Fairbanks, Alaska, and Turner's home town of Whitehorse. Unlike the Alaskan Iditarod, in which speed is all, the Quest is about developing bush survival skills and the mutual dependence of man and dog in temperatures that sometimes reach an unimaginable -60C (-76F).

In Jack London's day mushing was the only means of travel during the winter months. The Quest was devised in 1984 to retrace the isolated backwoods' trails pioneered by the early gold seekers, trappers and mail men. Intense cold and hazardous terrain are not the only problems. Irate grizzly bears woken from hibernation are not known for their charm and the cartoon-strip image of the moose is not quite so humorous when the real-life variety has just eviscerated your lead dog.

An average of only three hours' sleep every 24 hours also has strange effects on the mind. It's called being "in the zone". Hallucinations vary from a dog turning into a musher's naked girlfriend to a man sitting cross-legged in a sled basket blowing smoke rings and sipping a can of Coke.

Frank Turner himself is something of a Quest legend. The winner in 1995, in the record time of 10 days, 16 hours and 20 minutes, he is the only musher to have competed every year since the race's inauguration. For Frank, mushing is more than a way of life. "There're times when you're out there just by yourself. It almost becomes a religious or spiritual experience with the Northern Lights. A lot of people get religion out there. Not the church kind. I don't mean religion in that way. But it really is spiritual when you're so close to the wilderness."

I had persuaded Frank to give me some mushing lessons in return for my lending his support team a hand in the town of Dawson, the Quest's midway stage, where the mushers have a 36-hour compulsory layover. Dawson was the epicentre of the Klondike rush, the greatest mass migration in American history. More than 100,000 people set out in the hope of striking it rich but even getting to Dawson was an extraordinary achievement. Prospectors had to scale the notorious Chilkoot Pass before building rafts and taking their chances on a 600-mile stretch of the Yukon River. Thousands perished.

Today only a handful of Dawson's original buildings survive, buckled and twisted by the heave and thaw of the passing seasons. Thankfully, strict building regulations have preserved the raw spirit of the place. Wooden cabins on stilts with gunslinger walkways are painted in bright pastel shades with striking graphics welcoming visitors to the delights of Diamond Tooth Gertie's, the El Dorado Hotel and the Midnight Sun saloon. Icicle clusters cling to the guttering as Ski-doos, like motorbikes on skis, whirr up and down the streets, dodging mothers pulling infants on tiny sledges. The town has no pavements - they would break up in the extreme cold - and the sewage and water systems have to be kept in motion to avoid burst pipes.

I will remember Dawson as the place where I first saw the Northern Lights. And they sure beat watching television. More like the live performance of a celestial graffiti artist. First a tulip opened its petals, and then a genie swirled around its lair. The scientific explanation of solar wind striking the outer atmosphere hardly compares with the First Nation Inuit's belief that the Lights are their tribal ancestors playing football with walrus skulls.

During Quest week small crowds gather around the Dawson checkpoint on the edge of the Yukon river waiting patiently for the mushers. In the early hours Frank loomed out of the inky darkness in a mist of freezing dog breath - man and team smothered in icicles that crackled like chain mail. Next morning, at the mushers' camp, I lent a hand as the dogs were massaged and fed. Isabelle, leader of Frank's support team, handed me one of the huskies. "Make sure he's moving easily and watch for the colour of his urine. If it looks like lime juice it's probably OK; orange, and he's dehydrated."

From Dawson to the finishing line in Whitehorse, the support teams can deliver supplies but are not allowed to handle the dogs, although a strict veterinary check is carried out and unfit huskies are retired from the race. This year Frank started the race slowly, yet finished in fifth place, picking up a prize of £5,000. But as he points out: "No one in his right mind does this for the money."

Back at Frank's kennels after the race, the great musher kept his part of the bargain. "It's vital to get the team into a rhythm and not to let them go off too fast," he said, preparing me for my first overnight expedition. Our group of five mushers was each equipped with a team of six dogs hitched in pairs to a central tug rope. The moon was full as we headed off into the forest with the team turbo-charged and in full voice. I hardly dared imagine what it would have been like with a full Quest team of 14 dogs.

Over Laberge Lake we went, and up on to high ground with the lights of Whitehorse twinkling in the distance. Slowly I became more skilful with both the Ski-doo pad, a foot brake like a doormat with spikes in it, and the snow hook that acted as a hand brake. I soon discovered that leaning back on the runners made the sled glide better but taking one corner too fast we flew off into deep powder, a mistake that nearly resulted in a wipeout.

Frank had taught me the commands for left (gee) and right (haw), but although for me this was the outer reaches of the known universe, for the dogs it was merely darkness on the edge of town and it was questionable who was in control of whom. Out of sight of the other teams, I experienced the profound thrill of being alone in the wilderness, the shush of the sled and the panting of the dogs the only soundtrack to an intoxicating experience.

Every so often we stopped to check that all was well with the teams. Most important of all was to check the dogs' paws for ice balls, which can cut and bruise their feet. At each stop the dogs leapt into deep snow at the side of the track to cool off after their exertions. Then we were away again.

At camp we dug snow holes and lit a fire. In the extreme cold my brain had slowed considerably and I heard myself asking inanely, "What do we do for water, Frank?" just as a soot-blackened pot was scooped into the snow and placed on the fire.

During the night one of my team bit through his tug rope and had to be rescued after wandering off into the forest. But at breakfast I was jubilant at having survived my first night with a dog team at -30C (-22F). Frank handed me a cup of tea and congratulated me on my first blooding as a musher. A burst of euphoria overcame me - I had reached the heights of Jack London himself. Then Frank brought me down to earth: "But you were so lucky with the weather. Spring came very early this year."

Windows on the Wild operates a 10-day tour of the Yukon, with six days at Muktuk Kennels driving your own team of Yukon Quest dogs. Accommodation at Muktuk is in comfortable cabins, except for the tented final overnight expedition with the dogs. Accommodation in Whitehorse is in superior rooms and at a deluxe log-cabin resort on Marsh Lake. The cost of £1,930 includes Canadian Airlines flights, all accommodation and meals when at Muktuk Kennels. For more information on the Yukon, telephone the Visit Canada Centre on 0906 871 5000 (60p a minute).